Tag Archives | Corporate Governance

from NYTs Nearly 200 chief executives, including the leaders of Apple, Pepsi and Walmart, tried on Monday to redefine the role of business in society — and how companies are perceived by an increasingly skeptical public. Breaking with decades of long-held corporate orthodoxy, the Business Roundtable issued a statement on “the purpose of a corporation,” […]

from the guardian Students at Harvard Business School probably know little of Millwall Football Club. Nevertheless the corporate titans of the future might do well to learn from the luckless London team, now sunk at the bottom of the English game’s second tier and set to be relegated to its third. Which is not to say that […]

from NYTs As JPMorgan Chase’s annual meeting nears, much of the tension surrounds a critical vote to split the chairman and chief executive roles — a decision that could strip Jamie Dimon, the bank’s influential leader, of the dual titles he has held since 2006. Behind the scenes, though, another battle is brewing. Some JPMorgan shareholders are […]

from NYTs It’s a bedrock principle of our era: Companies should be run for the sole purpose of increasing their stock prices, or returning “value” to shareholders, the ultimate “owners.” To Lynn A. Stout, however, it amounts to nothing more than a “shareholder dictatorship.” Ms. Stout, a professor at Cornell Law School, has written a […]

from Forbes A corporate director’s role is one not of management but of oversight. Just as grandparents stay in the background while parents raise children, directors guide top executives from a respectful distance. One of the most direct ways that boards can guide executives is with effective compensation programs. Yet directors themselves often need guidance […]

from Forbes There was an amusement parlor in New York’s Chinatown where you played tic-tac-toe against a chicken, but the chicken got first move so unless you played flawlessly you could only draw against your feathered adversary. The expression “Politics leads economics” suddenly resonates. Our president’s health care initiative founders in the Congress. Massachusetts goes […]

from Forbes How will this year be different for the chief executives of American corporations? To begin with, in 2010 the corner office will see a lot more visitors as the CEOs of public companies adjust to increased scrutiny from board members and, in some cases, the government. As chiefs settle into the new year, […]

from BW.com The last decade has been an economic perfect storm. Things got off to an unpleasant start with the bursting of the dot-com bubble. The Enron/WorldCom/Tyco scandals followed close behind. The past few years have featured the subprime mortgage crisis and the credit crunch precipitated by the Lehman Brothers bankruptcy. For equity investors pummeled […]

from Forbes “Too big to fail” is a new phrase in the American lexicon, born in the economic crisis that gave us a bankrupt Lehman Brothers and the shotgun marriage of Merrill Lynch with Bank of America. Nobody really knows what it means, except that somehow in the banking world, central bankers can decide that […]

from Forbes Growing up on a farm in Idaho, I learned some timeless lessons at an early age–that every day began long before dawn, that hard work was the rule rather than the exception. Those lessons are just as true today as when I first helped my family harvest our crop of seed beans and […]

from NYTs EVERY once in a while, if only for sanity’s sake, it is wise to leave our bankrupt era behind and seek out a bit of wisdom from a moral authority. It’s a challenging exercise, given that so many formerly stellar reputations are now shipwrecked and that all those once-smart guys and gals have […]

from Forbes Regulators struggling to fix the world’s troubled financial institutions may take heart from the experience of China’s large state-owned banks. In the late 1990s, Chinese state lenders were all but insolvent, with nonperforming loan ratios at many banks exceeding 50%. A decade later, China’s state banks have found their footing–and have managed to […]

from Forbes Happy New Year, leaders of corporate America. It’s resolution time. One: Get to the gym. Two: Spend more quality time with the kids. Three: Restore the firm’s reputation and return it to profitability. Wait. You didn’t think it would be that easy, did you? We learned a lot about our businesses’ leaders this […]

from CNN As big Wall Street firms topple like dominoes, there is plenty of blame to go around. Failure this broad and deep takes a village, and regulators, lawyers, compensation consultants, auditors, executives, shareholders, and the press all played a part. But the people who are most responsible for the massive meltdowns of these institutions […]

from Forbes Whence your new chief executive? From inside? Or from outside? This week’s change at the top of the two large U.S. mortgage agencies, Fannie Mae (nyse: FNM – news – people ) and Freddie Mac (nyse: FRE – news – people ), seems to confirm a management succession rule of thumb: Go inside […]

Today is only one day in all the days that will ever be. But what will happen in all the other days that ever come can depend on what you do today.
- ERNEST HEMINGWAY

There is nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct, or more uncertain in its success, than to take the lead in the introduction of a new order of things. For the reformer has enemies in all those who profit by the old order, and only lukewarm defenders in all those who would profit by the new order, this lukewarmness arising partly from fear of their adversaries … and partly from the incredulity of mankind, who do not truly believe in anything new until they have had actual experience of it.
- NICCOLO MACHIAVELLI

When you invent the ship, you also invent the shipwreck; when you invent the plane you also invent the plane crash; and when you invent electricity, you invent electrocution... Every technology carries its own negativity, which is invented at the same time as technical progress.
- PAUL VIRILIO

We are surrounded by the wondrous effects of machines and are encouraged to ignore the ideas embedded in them. Once a technology is admitted it plays out its hand; it does what it is designed to do. Our task is to understand what that design is—that is to say, when we admit a new technology to the culture, we must do so with our eyes wide open.
- NEIL POSTMAN, TECHNOPOLY

You're only given a little spark of madness. You mustn't lose it.
- ROBIN WILLIAMS

Creativity is relational. Its practice is most about casting widely and connecting disparate dots of existing knowledge in new, meaningful ways. To be creative, you’ve got to mine knowledge. You have to know your dots.
- BRUCE NUSSBAUM

It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent that survives. It is the one that is most adaptable to change.
- CHARLES DARWIN

Arguing that you don't care about the right to privacy because you have nothing to hide is no different than saying you don't care about free speech because you have nothing to say.
- EDWARD SNOWDEN

You invade my privacy, it’s nothing. I try to get it back, it’s a crime. You’ll never understand... it’s not that I have nothing to hide... I have nothing I want you to see.
- THE GIRL, ANON

Be a nuisance where it counts. Do your part to inform and stimulate the public to join your action. Be depressed, discouraged and disappointed at failure and the disheartening effects of ignorance, greed, corruption and bad politics... but never give up.
- MARJORIE STONEMAN DOUGLAS

First they ignore you. Then they ridicule you. Then they fight you. Then you win.
- MAHATMA GANDHI

The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don’t have any.
- ALICE WATERS

To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public.
- THEODORE ROOSEVELT